Referral Relationship Management in the Rehabilitation Market - The importance of Referral Marketing in German Rehabilitation Clinics

Aim: The main objective of this study is to examine how important referral marketing is for German rehabilitation clinics. The study begins with a description of the conditions and trends in the German market for rehabilitation services. Next, the study will show how widespread referral marketing is in German rehabilitation clinics. Finally, the study will analyze how successful referral marketing and cooperation with referring entities is. Method: Firstly, qualitative expert interviews were conducted with referring entities and rehabilitation clinics. Based on the results of these interviews, hypotheses were generated and a quantitative online questionnaire for German rehabilitation clinics was formulated and sent out to 1142 clinics. The response rate was 15 Percent. An Ordered Probit Regression was used to test the hypotheses. Results: Over the last five years, there has been an increase in the influence of German insurers (GKV, PKV und DRV) on the choice of the rehabilitation clinic patients are referred to. A cooperation agreement with insurers is the primary factor that influences the referral of a patient to an appropriate rehabilitation clinic. Only 31 percent of rehabilitation clinics conduct only one or two referral marketing activities in the course of a year. It can be seen, that the main trend is that German rehabilitation clinics do not perform very many referral marketing activities (for instance cross media campaigns and face-to-face communications). Rehabilitation clinics are more successful (measurement: development of the number of referrals from 2011 to 2012), when they perform more referral marketing activities with health insurers. when they performmore face-to-face referral marketing activities with health insurers. if they have cooperation agreements with health insurers. Conclusion: Referral Marketing in German rehabilitation clinics is not very common today (yet). Referral marketing and cooperation with health insurers is especially successful, when face-to-face communication is conducted on a regular basis in conjunction with appropriate media activities.